mocking demon making sport of me; there is witchcraft in it.--It is too
monstrously impossible.
That hand--I propose to go to Italy, to see the pictures of the great
masters, to study, compare, draw, become a painter in short, in order
to be able to reproduce it as it is, as I see it, as I feel it; it will
perhaps serve the purpose of ridding me of this sort of obsession.
I longed for beauty; I did not know what I asked for.--It is like
trying to look at the sun without eyelids, it is like trying to
handle flames.--I suffer horribly.--To be unable to assimilate this
perfection, to be unable to pass into it and to cause it to pass into
me, to have no means of reproducing it and of making it feel!--When
I see anything beautiful, I want to touch it with my whole self,
everywhere and at the same time. I want to sing of it and paint it, to
carve it and write of it, to be loved by it as I love it; I want what
cannot be and never can be.
Your letter made me ill--very ill--forgive me for saying it.--All the
pure, tranquil happiness that you enjoy, the walks in the reddening
woods,--the long conversations, so affectionate and tender, that end
with a chaste kiss on the forehead; the serene, isolated life; the
days that pass so quickly that night seems to come before its time,
make the constant internal agitation in which I live seem even more
tempestuous.--So you are to be married in two months; all the obstacles
are removed, you are sure now of belonging to each other forever.
Your present felicity is augmented by all the happiness in store for
you. You are happy and you are certain of being happier soon.--What a
destiny is yours!--Your beloved is beautiful, but what you have loved
in her is not the mortal, palpable beauty, material beauty, but the
invisible, immortal beauty, the beauty that does not grow old, the
beauty of the soul.--She is full of charm and innocence; she loves
you as such souls know how to love.--You never looked to see if the
golden shade of her hair resembled the golden hair painted by Rubens or
Giorgione; but it pleased you because it was her hair. I will wager,
happy lover that you are, that you have no idea whether your mistress
is of the Grecian or Asiatic type, English or Italian.--O Silvio! how
rare are the hearts that are content with pure and simple love and
desire neither a hermitage in the forest nor a garden on an island in
Lago Maggiore.
If I had the courage to tear myself away from here, I would go and pass
a month with you; perhaps I should become purified in the air that
you breathe, perhaps the shade of your avenues would bring a little
coolness to my burning brow; but no, it is a paradise in which I must
not set foot.--Hardly ought I to be allowed to gaze from afar, over
the wall, at the two fair angels who are walking there, hand in hand,
eyes fixed upon eyes. The devil can enter Eden only in the shape of a
serpent, and, dear Adam, for all the happiness on earth, I would not be
the serpent of your Eve.
What frightful upheaval has taken place in my soul of late! who has
transformed my blood and changed it to venom? O monstrous thought, that
puttest forth thy pale green twigs and umbels of hemlock in the glacial
shadow of my heart, what poisoned wind deposited there the seed from
which thou didst spring? This, then, was what was in store for me, this
is the end of all the roads that I so desperately attempted!--O fate,
how thou dost mock at me!--All those upward flights of the eagle toward
the sun, those pure flames aspiring to reach the sky, that divine
melancholy, that profound, restrained passion, that worship of beauty,
that refined and curious fancy, that unquenchable and ever-rising
flood from the interior fountain, that ecstasy borne upon wings always
spread, that reverie blooming brighter than the hawthorn in May--all
the poesy of my youth, all those beautiful and rare gifts were
destined to serve no other purpose than to place me beneath the lowest
of mankind.
I longed to love.--I went about like a madman, calling and invoking
love;--I writhed in frenzy because of my feeling of helplessness;
I set my blood on fire, I dragged my body about in the gutters of
debauchery;--I strained to my arid heart until I almost stifled her,
a woman, young and beautiful, who loved me.--I ran after the passion
that avoided me. I prostituted myself, and I acted like a virgin who
should venture into an evil place, hoping to find a lover among those
whom depravity led thither, instead of waiting patiently, in dignified,
silent retirement, until the angel whom God has set aside for me
should appear in a radiant penumbra, a heavenly flower in her hand.
All these years that I have wasted in puerile agitation, in running
hither and thither, in seeking to force nature and time, I should have
passed in silence and meditation, in trying to make myself worthy to
be loved;--that would have been wisely done;--but I had scales over
my eyes and I marched straight to the precipice. I already have one
foot suspended over the void, and I believe that I shall soon lift the
other. It is useless for me to resist, I feel that I must roll to the
bottom of this new abyss that has opened within me.
Yes, it was thus that I imagined love. I feel now what I had
dreamed.--Yes, there are the delightful yet terrible sleepless
nights when the roses were thistles and the thistles roses; there
are the sweet misery and the miserable joy, the ineffable trouble
that encompasses you in a golden cloud and makes objects waver
before your eyes as drunkenness does, the ringing in the ears in
which you always hear the last syllable of the loved one's name, the
pallor, the flushes, the sudden shivering, the burning and freezing
perspiration;--all those are there; the poets do not lie.
When I am about to enter the salon where we usually meet, my heart
beats so violently that you can see it through my clothes and I am
obliged to hold it back with both hands for fear it will escape me.--If
I see my dream at the end of a path and in the park, the distance
vanishes at once and I have no idea what becomes of the road: it must
be that the devil takes me or that I have wings.--Nothing can distract
my thoughts: if I read, her image comes between the book and my
eyes;--I mount my horse, I gallop over the country, and it always seems
to me that I feel its long hair mingling with mine in the wind, hear
its hurried respiration, and feel its warm breath upon my cheek. The
image possesses me and follows me everywhere, and I never see it more
clearly than when it is not before my eyes.
You pitied me for not being in love--pity me now because I am in love;
and above all because I love what I love. What a misfortune, what a
crushing blow upon my already blasted life!--what an insensate, guilty,
hateful passion has taken possession of me!--It is a shameful thing for
which I shall never cease to blush. It is the most deplorable of all my
aberrations, I cannot imagine it, I cannot understand it, everything
within me is in confusion and bewilderment; I have no idea who I am
nor who others are, I doubt whether I am a man or a woman, I have a
horror of myself, I feel strange, inexplicable impulses, and there are
moments when it seems to me that my reason is going, and when the idea
of my existence abandons me altogether. For a long time I have been
unable to believe in anything; I have listened to myself and watched
myself closely. I have tried to disentangle the skein that has become
entangled in my soul. At last, through all the veils in which it was
enveloped, I have discovered the ghastly truth--Silvio, I love--Oh! no,
I can never tell you--I love a man!